News updates from Oracle conferences

Maria Bartiromo, host of CNBC’s Closing Bell, brought the trading floor to the main floor of Oracle OpenWorld Monday and Tuesday for exclusive sit-down interviews with Oracle President Mark Hurd and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. The activity at Oracle OpenWorld rivals any seen during a busy trading day on Wall Street, and Bartiromo’s live broadcasts added to the energy here with fast-paced conversations about Oracle’s overall business.

Bartiromo kicked off Closing Bell questions for Hurd by asking him to recap one of the hot topics here at Oracle OpenWorld: cloud.

“The company has been working on cloud applications for multiple years. We made some exciting announcements last night,” said Hurd, in reference to Ellison’s overview of Oracle’s cloud offerings during his Sunday keynote address. “We see this as a continuation of a lot of work the company’s been doing for a long time.”

Ellison and Bartiromo also discussed Oracle’s cloud strategy, which Ellison emphasized is a huge opportunity for Oracle’s organic growth. “There are a lot of niche companies, but we have a complete suite of cloud applications, and we also offer the underlying infrastructure. We are the only company in the world that participates in all three layers of the cloud – software, platform, and infrastructure,” Ellison said.

Additionally, Bartiromo discussed the challenges of big data with Hurd, who said that companies are facing a data deluge and are using large portions of IT spend to keep up with data storage needs. “We have the ability to shrink their data, compress their data, give them more performance while they do it, and save our customers a bunch of money by consolidating that infrastructure—making it perform better. And at the same time, the companies have tremendous opportunities to innovate with new, modern applications that we’re releasing with Oracle Fusion cloud applications.”

Bartiromo’s skill at in-depth executive interviews and market insights has made her one of the most celebrated and respected journalists in business and financial news. She also appeared with Hurd Tuesday morning in a session at Executive Edge @ OpenWorld, the invitation-only executive summit taking place through Wednesday this week.